Getting To You
by LadyBastet92
Summary: Dean didn't care that he was doped up on morphine and in a cast the size of East Texas - the only thing that mattered was finding a way to Sam and making sure he was okay.


The first word that rolled of his tongue the moment he regained anything close to consciousness was "Sam".

It wasn't new. Dean's hypersensitivity to the well-being of his little brother was something he'd always been attuned to, no matter what disastrous state he himself was in. It was his most primal instinct, more than it was to eat or speak or freakin' breathe – _make sure Sammy is okay_. So when he managed to clear the spots and fog away from his vision and hoist himself up to something semi-vertical, he was more than a bit concerned to not see Sam in his direct line of vision. Sam had always taken up the soap-opera role of fretting-by-the-bedside whenever Dean landed himself in a hospital: the worry lines that looked engraved on his forehead, the stubble showing that he hadn't shaved in days, holding his hand like the sappy emo-chick he was, the whole routine.

But now, he was nowhere to be seen. Not in the chair next to him, not by the window outside the door. Dean frowned. That wasn't a good sign. He remembered Sam seizing in the ambulance, recognizing the severe head-trauma he must've suffered to bring it on. Considering the fact that Dean was now in a hospital gown and – fuck, one huge-ass looking cast, he must've been under for a while. Which meant that Sam had been under for even longer.

He grunted as he pulled out the IV in his arm, worry tensing his morphine-induced muscles as tight as they could go. Which isn't very tight at all, Dean realized, when he struggled to find the energy to swing his legs off the side of the bed. His left leg drooped rather pathetically, but he could still control it. His gimp leg, however, was going to prove to be more trouble. He winced as the cast hit the genophobic-white floor with a thud – shit, it was freaking _heavy_, too – and tried to maneuver it over enough so he could get in a position to stand. But if he was going to get anywhere soon, he was going to need some crutches.

And of course, the crutches just _had_ to be in the opposite corner of the hospital room. Dean cursed under his breath – Seriously, whose freakin' bright idea was that? – and with all the concentration and strength he could round up, he pushed off the bed and started making his way to the other end of the room.

He leaned on the wall as he hobbled as fast as he could to the crutches. The weight of the cast caused his gimp leg to drag behind, and he furrowed his brow at the sharp pain its position was causing him. He pushed past it though, as well as his frustration at the fact he was moving at slower than a snail's pace here, and how the hell were they going to outrun, much less fight, a gang of fucking _Leviathans_ in this condition, Leviathans who for all that he knew were chomping down on his already-traumatized-in-more-ways-than-one little brother –

He cursed again, much louder this time, and forced himself to move faster. When he crossed the door and finally reached those goddamned crutches, he was ready to thank whatever fucking deity out there who still cared anymore. "I'm comin' Sam," he whispered to the empty air, positioning the crutches under his arms.

Finding a way to open the freaking door already took five minutes more than it should have. Dean hadn't moved so much as two feet, and he was already sick to hell with his steel-weighted cast. It was definitely going to make their escape much harder to conceive, much less attain, and he couldn't help but think about how much Cas could've helped right about now –

_Shit, Dean. No._ He had enough dragging him down at the moment, literally and figuratively. He couldn't spare a thought for the ones who had already left him. He had to get to the only thing he had left, the only one who mattered. Cas and Bobby (his throat couldn't help but constrict and emit something scarily close to a sob at the thought of his surrogate father's name), they were gone. Dean could mourn them later. Right now, he had to get to Sam.

He limped down the bright hallway, not exactly sure if he was heading in a straight line thanks to his drugged-induced state, occasionally shaking his head to make sure he stayed awake. He checked every window to every room for Sam's instantly recognizable gigantor body and mop of brown hair. Some nurses and patients were giving him strange looks, and Dean's heart quickened at the possibility of any one of them being Leviathans. Goddamn it, being in a hospital was bad enough without the prospect of becoming some monster's next _meal_.

Part of him realized that the reason so many people were giving him weird looks was probably because he was still in his hospital gown, which wasn't exactly the most shear thing in the world. Normally, Dean would be slightly mortified, but now the Leviathans and everyone else could eyeball his sweet ass till the day was long for all he cared. As long as he could make out of there with both his and Sam's ass intact, he'd count it as a victory.

But Dean was starting to get more and more nervous as he passed more and more rooms full of people who were distinctly not-Sam. It pushed away some of those annoying clouds in his head and urged him onward even faster than before. In the back of his brain, the idea that one of those things had already killed and devoured Sam, or were about to, both filled him with icy dread and hot fury_. If any one of those sonsuvbitches even thinks of hurting him, I swear on all that's holy left on this shithole of an Earth –_

"Sir?" He bolted around, almost falling in the process, but he was able to catch himself in time with the help of the woman who just spoke to him. A nurse, from the looks of it. After helping him back on his feet, she gave him a disapproving look. "Sir, you really shouldn't be out –"

"I need to find my brother." His words were sharp, but they showed his urgent desperation. "He – he hurt his head – told me they took him for an MRI –"

The nurse blinked. Then her eyebrows rose in surprise. "You're not 'Dean', are you?"

Dean nodded so vigorously he would've fallen flat on his face in the nurse hadn't steadied him again. "Yeah, yeah I am. How did you know?"

"He…calls out for you," she said, speaking more softly this time. "When he's conscious."

"Take me to him." His tone started off demanding, but then dissolved into something weaker, something vulnerable and childlike, as his voice cracked: "Please".

"Hey, easy now," said the nurse, placing a firm hand on his back, her voice all Mother Molly kinds of soothing now. "Your brother's fine. I'll take you to him."

If Dean had been anybody else, he probably would've cried. "Thank you," he replied and the women gently pushed him forward and kept him from breaking his other leg in his haste. He sucked in a breath when they finally reached the room (_seriously, how the hell do incapacitated people have the patience to move around at the pace they do?_), and she opened the door for him with a sympathetic smile.

And he was there. Hooked up to wires and machines, with a bandage around his head and an IV in his oversized arm, but he was there. Not chomped up into little bits, or screaming and in agony. For the moment, that was enough for Dean to exhale a small sigh of relief.

He hobbled his way over to his brother's bedside, giving the nurse the best smile he could as she pulled up a chair for him and then slunk out of the room, leaving the two in privacy. And, chick-flick moments be damned, the first thing he did was reach for his baby brother's hand. "Sammy," he whispered, using his other hand to brush his hair away from crinkled forehead. He didn't look peaceful – Sam never look peaceful nowadays when he slept, hadn't for the past few years now, a fact that never pleased Dean in the slightest – but he wasn't seizing. Wasn't trapped in the throes of the Cage, but God, how many times had he been since they took him away from Dean? Three minutes out had turned out to be a week for Sam – how long had he endured Hell without his brother by his side this time?

As if sensing his racing thoughts, Sam's eyelids started to flicker open at Dean's touch. It took him a moment or two to adjust to what was around him (and Dean prayed that that was _all _he was seeing right now), but when his eyes finally locked with his big brother's, something in him unraveled. Dean had never seen his little brother look so scared in his entire life.

"Dean?" It was a question and a plea at once, and Dean instantly leaned forward and made sure that Sam knew that he was real. He cupped his hand on Sam's face as gently as he could to not disrupt the bandages, and smiled. And if there were some tears in his eyes, then the world could fucking sue him.

"It's me, Sam." He squeezed Sam hand for good measure, which was luckily (or perhaps unluckily) his uninjured hand. "The one-and-only."

Sam's eyes started to tear up, and if this were any other situation then Dean would give him a snide but affectionate comment about being a girl. Seeing as he might've been trapped with fucking Lucifer back in Hell for a discernable amount of time, however, Dean carefully but tenderly rubbed his thumb across his cheek, like he did when Dean was eight and found Sam suddenly curled up against his side crying as silently as he could. When everything bad was waved away as harmless nightmares and nothing could or would touch Sammy as long as his big brother was around.

"You were g-gone," Sam choked out, leaning forward and grasping at Dean's forearm, panic and pain from whatever the hell he'd been seeing still evident in his eyes. "I was – was _back_ –"

"Shhh," Dean soothed, leaning in far enough so he can wrap an arm around his brother and pull him into the crook of his neck. "You weren't there, Sam. You were here, in the hospital - which isn't the greatest place in the world to be right now, true - but you aren't _there_." He rubbed Sam's back, deciding that the Leviathans could wait in all their gross black-gooey glory for right now. Everything could wait until Sam was something close to okay. "I found you, Sammy. I'm here now."

Sam continued to take deep, heavy breathes that shook them both, and Dean just sat there, holding him, and feeling for the first time since he broke his leg that he was doing something useful, something right.

"D-don't go," Sam whispered, his voice wet and cracking. Sam hadn't broken like this, not so completely, so openly, since the Wall came down. Half of Dean was freaking – this was _not_ the time and place for a Hell therapy session – but the other half was…strangely relieved. Because at least now, like this, Dean could be there for Sam, watch over him and take care of him, like a big brother should.

The world was still stupid and evil and cruel enough to drop boulders onto their backs after everything they'd endured. Maybe that would never change. But neither would this. Two brothers, looking after each other, the big looking after the little. That's all Dean had to live for, and he'd be damned a thousand times over before the world took that away from him ever again.

"I won't," Dean promised, letting his forehead touch the top of Sam's mess of hair. "I'm not going anywhere without you, Sammy. Never."


End file.
